November 11, 2008

Adai & Aviyal ~ Kerala Special

Adai, a mixed lentil pancake is very popular in Kerala, especially among Palakkad Iyers. Adai, compared to dosa, doesn't preparation much earlier, since it requires around 3 hours of soaking time only. Doesn't take much time to do the grinding and no wait period for fermentation. Even though the ultimate is paper thin crisp dosa, I love crisp adais very much. This is usually served as after-school tiffin at home. Each home has their own proportion for rice and dal used. For Karthigai Deepam festival, this adai is one of the neivadyams. As is the custom, par boiled rice is not used for neivadyams, its totally avoided when making for Karthigai. Whole pepper and tiny bits of coconut is also added to it. Here is the recipe which I follow on ordinary days.

Raw rice - 1 cup

Parboiled rice - 1/2 cup

Chana dal - 1/2 cup

Urad dhal - 1/2 cup (whole urad/split with skin)

Red chillies - 3 nos

Green chilly - 2 nos

Ginger a small wedge

Curry leaves

Salt

Hing powder - 1/2 tspn

Wash and soak both rice, chana dal and urad dal for 3 hours. Grind the soaked mix along with green chilly, red chilly, ginger, curry leaves and salt to a coarse batter. The batter should not be smooth. Else you will not get crisp adais. It will taste like dosa. Add hing powder and mix well. No fermentation required.

Heat a cast iron griddle. Sprinkle few drops of oil. Take a ladle of batter and spread into thick dosa/pancake. Make a hole in the center. This will enable to get crisp adai. Drizzle oil on the sides and in the hole made in the centre. When one side is cooked, flip and cook the other side. Cook in medium flame, so that its well cooked , since it is made relatively thicker than ordinary dosa. Traditionally it is served with powdered jaggery or butter or pickle.

I am not sure how the combination of adai and avial became popular. May be its the idea of some hotelier to combine two popular dishes of Kerala and serve as Malabar Adai and Avial. However it has become a huge hit. You are sure to find this combo in any Tamilnadu hotels. So here is the recipe for aviyal. I don't prepare aviyal for adai. Sometimes its just co-incidental.

Aviyal gets the unique taste from the assortment of vegetables that go into this dish. Veggies along with ground coconut and coconut oil used for garnish brings out the unique flavor. The vegetable which is used in large proportion for aviyal is ash gourd/poozhanikkai/kumbhalanga. Next comes pumpkin/mathan. I shall list the veggies that can be used for aviyal in the order of the proportion. There is no specific proportion to be followed. Its up to your intuition to add the veggies.

Cook the veggies with turmeric and salt added. Don't over cook the veggies. It should be soft yet firm. Yam can be pressure cooked or cooked separately since it takes longer time to cook.Grind together coconut and green chillies to a fine paste. Add just enough water to grind.If you want to serve the aviyal as side, remove the excess water from the cooked veggies. Add the ground paste and stir in the whipped curd. Bring to a boil. Don't let it simmer.Add a tablespoon of coconut oil and fresh curry leaves.

I came to know of this combo only after moving to Tamilnadu. As long as I was in Kerala, we had this with vellam. My adai usually has a little bit of all the pulses in my kitchen to make it more proteinful.